One hundred days. That’s reportedly how long the world’s only Jewish state is allowed to fight for its survival against a barbaric, Iranian-backed terrorist organization before President Biden loses his patience.
As the world Sunday marked 100 days since Hamas’ Oct. 7 mass-murder, mass-rape and hostage-taking, White House national-security spokesman John Kirby declared it was “the right time” for Israel to scale back its military operations in Gaza aimed at dismantling all Hamas terrorist infrastructure.
Hours later, an unnamed US official told Axios, “The president’s patience is running out.”
For now, at least, Biden’s retreat is rhetorical.
The Pentagon continues to resupply the Israeli military with critical munitions to continue its war on Hamas.
But the timing of this political pullback couldn’t be worse.
The Senate is expected to hold a vote Tuesday on a resolution Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced aimed at conditioning US military assistance to Israel.
It will be the first major test for Senate Democrats.
Note that Israel is a fellow democracy whose military often holds itself to higher ethical standards than the United States.
A vote in favor of the Sanders resolution is a vote to delegitimize Israel’s inherent right to self-defense — or, perhaps more honestly, a vote in favor of Israel’s eventual annihilation.
The White House had suggested it opposed the resolution — but its latest comments send mixed signals.
Biden’s apparent fear of firmly and unconditionally supporting Israel after just 100 days stands in stark contrast with the president’s pledge to support Ukraine “as long as it takes” after nearly two years of war.
But the president faces no anonymous letters from his own appointees opposing Ukraine — nor does he see violent pro-Russia demonstrators outside his windows on Pennsylvania Avenue.
On Saturday, Hamas-supporting protesters damaged a security fence outside the White House while staff and reporters were relocated for their safety.
Pro-terror demonstrations in America and Great Britain increasingly feature signs supporting the Iran-backed Houthi terror group, which is responsible for the continuous missile attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea — signaling support for radical anti-Western ideologies, not merely opposition to Israel.
At a weekend rally in London, one prominent Palestinian activist said, “We must normalize massacres as a status quo.”
And Hamas released a sickening video Monday of one Israeli hostage revealing the deaths of two others.
President Biden should be using these moments to further marginalize anti-Israel voices on his left flank.
Follow along with The Post’s live blog for the latest on Hamas’ attack on Israel
Yet the louder and more extreme those voices grow, the faster Biden runs away from supporting a fellow democracy battling a terrorist group responsible for the murders of dozens of Americans — and which continues to hold other US citizens hostage.
Biden’s more strident insistence that Israel transition to “lower-intensity operations” against Hamas in Gaza comes alongside political pressure on Jerusalem to abandon a planned defensive military campaign on its northern border against an Iran-backed terror threat 10 times larger than Hamas.
Israeli officials may be underestimating Washington’s determination to “contain regional escalation” in an election year — code for strong-arming Israel into permitting Iran’s existential threats to remain intact even if it leaves the Jewish state exposed to another Oct. 7 and deterred from acting against Iran’s accelerating nuclear program.
Israel has already evacuated roughly 100,000 people from towns bordering Lebanon out of fear the Hezbollah terrorist organization might unleash its own surprise invasion.
But Hezbollah is not a threat just to Israel’s border communities — with 200,000 rockets, including thousands of precision-guided munitions, it is capable of threatening Haifa and Tel Aviv in addition to the country’s critical infrastructure.
Israelis will not return to their homes in the north so long as Hezbollah remains across the border.
And waiting around for Tehran’s order to rain missiles down on Israel while the ayatollah races across the nuclear threshold is a status quo Israel’s leaders can no longer accept.
But if Biden can’t stomach 100 days of war against Hamas after the horrific scenes of Oct. 7, can anyone be confident he’ll green-light military support for an even larger fight in Lebanon?
Indeed, the president withdrew a carrier strike group off Israel’s coast and sent a senior adviser to the region to negotiate Israel’s surrender of territory to Lebanon in exchange for Hezbollah moving a few kilometers north.
All while letting Iran gain access to $10 billion.
More than 75 years after its founding, Israel is waging its second war of independence.
Surviving the 21st century depends on Jerusalem dismantling Iran’s so-called “ring of fire” and denying Tehran its quest for nuclear weapons.
The war against Hamas in Gaza must be viewed as merely the first phase of this multifront confrontation.
Facing a shared adversary in Tehran, any US president should be fully committed to Israel’s success in this effort — not trying to pull the plug before Phase 1 is even complete.
Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is a former National Security Council official and senior US Senate aide.
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